The Redlands City Council declared a local emergency Monday, ratifying a declaration by the city manager last week after a summer downpour Aug. 3 opened a sinkhole at California Street and Redlands Boulevard.

The sinkhole is estimated to be 40 feet long, 15 feet wide and 12 to 15 feet deep at the intersection of California and Redlands. The opening at the surface is not that large, but there was extensive undermining as floodwaters raced through a culvert beneath the intersection, city officials said.

The council approved hiring Matich Corp. to make the repairs, which already have begun but probably will take another two weeks. The contractor, which also is working on city street repaving, is authorized for repairs up to $200,000.

City engineer Fred Mousavipour said the company was chosen because its workers already were in the city working on the paving projects and were able to quickly respond to the emergency with the necessary equipment.

Workers were unable to enter the hole for several days because of concerns about instability of underground utilities, said Chris Diggs, deputy director of the municipal utilities and engineering department.

Once workers could get inside, they found much more damage than was evident from the surface and that part of the culvert had been undermined, he said.

“We had to pump in several trucks full of cement underneath one of the walls of the culvert to prevent it from collapsing,” Diggs said.

No work can be done for the next week because the concrete needs time to set, he said.

A medium-pressure gas line and Verizon lines run under the street at the intersection and had to be stabilized.

While the hole appeared on the north side of Redlands Boulevard, the erosion extends to the west and north.

Once the structural repairs are complete, workers will have to remove the pavement to expose the entire hole before they can begin filling it, Mousavipour said.

The local emergency declaration was required in order for Redlands to qualify for any available state or federal reimbursements. If federal reimbursement is available, it would pay 75 percent of the cost, said Fay Glass, the city’s emergency operations manager.

The state would reimburse 75 percent of the remaining amount and the city would be responsible for just more than 6 percent of the cost, Glass said.

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